Privacy News

After four years of negotiations, the EU Commission, Parliament, and Council have reached a final agreement on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is an omnibus data protection law which sets arguably the most extensive data protection laws globally, along with strong enforcement authority. The new law contains many new provisions that move

WPF’s Executive Director Pam Dixon has been named to the editorial board of Technology Science, a new academic journal from Harvard University’s Data Privacy Lab, led by Dr. Latanya Sweeney. The new journal focuses on the intersection of technology and its various impacts on society. The journal is examining this topic in breadth and depth, explaining on its web site: “The scientific study of technology-society clashes is a cross-disciplinary pursuit, so papers in Technology Science may come from any of many possible disciplinary traditions, including but not limited to social science, computer science, political science, law, economics, policy, or statistics.” more …

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 2, 2015 San Diego — Today, the United States Senate passed the USA FREEDOM Act in a vote of 67 – 32. As passed, the final bill will limit the “bulk collection” of Americans’ phone data after the President has signed the bill into law. “This bill reforms the National Security

President Obama announced a sweeping set of proposals around privacy today as he spoke from the venue of the FTC. The World Privacy Forum is pleased with the announcement, but retain some concerns. “We are pleased to see the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights head into actual legislation at long last, but we are concerned

On Christmas Eve, the US National Security Agency (NSA) declassified and released 12 years of reports outlining compliance violations that were submitted to the NSA Intelligence Oversight Committee. The reports, which are required by law, had previously been classified and were the subject of a legal battle between the ACLU and the government. Although heavily redacted, the reports the NSA released of are vital interest to the public because they reveal a pattern of significant privacy violations and in some cases serious abuses in granular detail.

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.

WPF has conducted original research on India's Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.